Origins
by Gehenna79
Summary: I use Halo lore to explain the mysteries of the Gears universe. Do not read if you are expecting MC to make an appearance and ship with Samantha Byrne, or something of that nature.


**BAIRD**

**Seventeen years after Emergence Days, Azura**

**"_You're a scientific man. Look at this later and try and understand what I wanted to do, and what I had to do." _- Professor Adam Fenix to Private Damon Baird when confronted about his knowledge about the Locust Horde before E-day.**

* * *

Even after two weeks, nobody had stepped foot in Professor Fenix's lab. Baird had asked Marcus' permission, and Marcus had allowed him to look around for data, as long as he brought Anya with him. Baird didn't mind, after all they had been through, Anya was now a close friend, though he would never admit that publicly. Baird's way with people had always been obtuse, even with Cole, though it had always been obvious that the two shared a special bond, forged from the fires of war and stresses of the battlefield. Ever since Baird and Cole had met Marcus and Dom on that mission involving the Lightmass Bomb, their lives had changed forever.

It was hard to believe that this was all over, that after seventeen long years of fighting for survival against not only one, but two, deadly enemies without mercy or conscience, that they were finally at peace. Baird knew now what some of the Tollen veterans had felt when the Pendulum wars were over. Seventy years old, all they had known their entire lives was war, and now, it was all gone, like a magician pulling a tablecloth out from underneath some dishes. The scars of the war would never truly be gone, not ever, and maybe not for hundreds of years. The entire world was scarred, and Sera needed time to heal.

The last two weeks had been filled with work, but now Victor Hoffman had ordered that all the Gears who had participated in the final battle against Queen Myrrah to rest and recuperate, saying they had long earned a vacation. Though Hoffman knew quite well that Marcus and the others were extremely bad at relaxing, he still made them anyway, because otherwise they would work themselves to death. Repairs had been made day and night on some of the structures of Hotel Azura, and the island's facilities had needed inspection, to see what state they were in. The island had been fully self-sufficient, capable of growing food and harvesting solar energy (as well as Imulsion), and almost all of that had been spared by the Locust. And to top it all off, they had found a hidden bunker, full of scientists and children who had hidden when the Locust had landed. Many of them had never even seen a Locust or a Lambent until that day. They had been completely isolated from the world.

Which was exactly what Baird saw them as; isolated. With all Imulsion destroyed by Adam's weapon, their one source of fuel had been taken as well. With Azura's manufacturing abilities and scientific resources, it could be possible that they could figure out another solution, but it would be many, many years for that plan to bear fruit . Still, nobody was complaining about that, and not even Baird had the gall to bring that up. It was very likely that civilization would return to tribalism, and that, at least in the remainder of his lifetime, Baird would never see the mainland ever again. That was okay with him though, the rest of the world was a bombed out shit-hole, and the only living things left were animals and Stranded, and the Lambent had almost wiped out the latter. For all intents and purposes, Azura was the last human city on Sera.

And for some reason, that didn't bother him.

But now that he was forced on vacation, he had the time to sate his curiosity, and find out exactly all what Adam Fenix had known about the Locust, the Lambent, and other things. So many questions, ever since the beginning of the war even, had crossed his mind, even in the most unlikely places, like in the middle of firefights, or just laying in the barracks in Jacinto. Where had the Locust come from? Why was their queen human? _Was_ their queen human? What was Imulsion? But most important of all, why didn't Adam tell anybody about the Locust, even after they had attacked the surface? All of it puzzled Baird to the highest degree, and he was determined to find out why. Adam had given him a data disk just before he had died, when he, Marcus, Cole, and Anya had all confronted the Professor. He had said to Baird, "You're a scientific man. Look at this later and try and understand what I wanted to do, and what I had to do."

But what reason could Adam have had for all of this? So many lives might have been saved if they had known beforehand. Baird might have never stayed in the army; he might have gone on to do what he had wanted, to become an engineer. Marcus and Anya might have married, and Marcus would have never gone to jail and become horribly scarred both physically and mentally from the experience. Dom would have never died, and neither his kids nor his wife as well. And Cole, oh god, Cole, he would have still been a famous thrash-ball star. He would have never met Baird though, and Baird might never have thawed his outer shell of disdain for other people without Cole's warmth.

It was a warm, sunny day, and shafts of golden light fell through Adam's lab windows, creating a kind of angelic glow in the room. There was only one computer there, which Baird found odd, sitting on a fine writing desk. There were several glass jars that had contained samples of creatures with Lambency, but now were just filled with alcohol and a swirl of black ashes. There was a cage, for what, Baird had no idea, and lastly there was a refrigerator, for which Baird assumed was used to keep samples that required cooling, and maybe a lunch or two, though Baird had seen the luxurious dining halls of Azura, so he doubted that was its main use.

"Where should we look first?" asked Anya, interrupting Baird's train of thought.

Baird scratched his head and then pointed at the computer, "Yeah, we should look at this data disk first."

"Wait."

"What?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if we find something in these files that we'd rather not know?"

"I think seventeen years of warfare has made me quite desensitized at this point, Anya."

"Its not about that, its whether or not we think we _deserve _to know. What if there's information that we aren't ready for?"

"Like what? We already learned that the very thing we put in our cars to make them drive, for god's sake, was all this time, a dormant, living organism that can mutate other organisms into exploding balls of hot goo! I think there's nothing more dangerous than that!"

Anya bit her lip and stood in silence, then merely shrugged and said, "Alright, let's do it."

Baird took a deep breath, then sat himself down on the seat across from the computer. He put in the disk, turned on the computer, and waited for it to come online. He doubted that the internet was working, but most likely the files would still be there, unless Adam had initiated a purge before his untimely demise, but why would he have? He had given Baird the disc anyway to access those files.

The file directory came up and Baird read through them:

"Looks like we got,

Project_New_Hope

Project_BNO

Project_Hoyle

Project_Whittle

and last, but not least, AJF_Personal."

"New Hope? As in New Hope research facility? The one that Hoffman sent you to where Marcus and Dom said they had run into those...things?"

"The Sires? Yeah I was there too. We never really understood what they were there for, or how that was connected to the Locust."

"You couldn't possibly think that..."

"Those were Locust? Maybe the first Locust?"

Anya's mouth hung open and she shook her head violently in disbelief, "Its not possible. That facility only operated between 79 B.E - 71 B.E, the Locust infrastructure down there was too old for that."

Baird furrowed his brow in confusion and nodded, "You're right. Maybe there's a different connection. I didn't see the Sires, but Marcus described them as being not quite Locust, nor human. Maybe, they were Lambent?"

"Did Marcus tell you about the Formers? The one we ran into in Charr and Mercy?"

"Oh yeah right. Well, Adam Fenix's theories seemed to think that Imulsion was a highly mutational lifeform anyway. It could have evolved from Sires to Formers in a time period of eighty years."

"We'll never know for sure if we don't read it...but what about the others?"

"Don't know what BNO stands for, but Hoyle and Whittle were both scientists that stayed here, so that was probably just research notes of theirs. Important, but probably not earth-shattering, now that the Lambent are gone."

"Alright, we read the New Hope files now, then the BNO ones tomorrow."

Anya gulped some air and nodded, "I've faced down worse than this, lets do it."

That was right, Baird knew, Anya had been a CIC controller on the same line that her mom had been, when her mom had died at the battle of Aspho Point. Anya had watched Marcus defy orders and get thrown into prison because of it. Anya had turned from a CIC controller to a frontline Gear within no time at all. She was indeed capable of this, and Baird found himself having more respect for her now.

He used the arrow keys on the keyboard to select the new hope files. He opened them, decrypted them, and then watched as a slough of information came up. All of them were...journal entries, by a man named Niles Samson, from the time that New Hope was operational. Then there were a few by the old Chairman Monroe, and two by a Stephanie Zimmer, a scientist there. The name Samson sounded familiar, and Baird of course knew Monroe from history class, but Zimmer was an unknown.

"Samson," Anya whispered, "His personality become the Artificial Intelligence that ran the place. I heard him through Marcus' earpiece."

"Oh yeah, Marcus mentioned something about a nutball computer, that they had to disconnect. Never liked AIs, always unpredictable. Well, this is it. Need a drink first?"

Anya shook her head, "No, do you?"

Baird went downstairs to pour a shot of whiskey and downed it in one gulp, then came back up.

"Alright, now I'm ready" he said with a quiver in his voice.

And so they began to read the journal entries of Niles Samson.

* * *

**Author's Note: Thanks for reading. This is a crossover, but its not a "heavy" crossover. There will be no Halo characters appearing in this fic, and it will be mostly centered around the GoW universe. However, it uses Halo Lore to explain some of the mysteries surrounding the Gears of War universe, most importantly the origins of Imulsion, the Lambent, the Locust, and who Queen Myrrah is. Its headcanon, basically. Therefore, I decided to have it be a crossover, since more people will probably read it that way anyways.**


End file.
